Manhattan Boat People: Lo Rnt, Riv Vu

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: October 5, 1991

Riverside Park was not meant to be a housing project, but over the years two groups of people have made it home. One formed a small shantytown of homeless men and women. The other established yachting's version of a trailer park on Manhattan's Upper West Side, living year-round on 120 boats and floating homes in the city's 79th Street Boat Basin.

The homeless people were called squatters, and the boat owners were called a community, but to some critics there was not much difference: Both groups had turned public waterfront into private housing at unbeatable prices. For $300 a month -- less than it costs to park in nearby commercial garages -- boat basin residents can not only park their cars in a city garage, they get a berth big enough to moor a three-story home.

This year, though, when city officials moved to reclaim the park for public recreation, a clear difference between the two groups emerged. The city evicted the homeless people in the summer. It is letting the boat dwellers remain, even though most of them have been on rent strike for more than a year, and it is spending more than $2 million over the next year to fix up their home.

In some cities it might seem odd for a government confronting a budget crisis to be subsidizing the owners of yachts and houseboats, but in New York the boat owners and some local politicians consider it customary and just. And that may be the most remarkable thing about the story of New York's brand of boat people: It is a typical example of how the housing system often works in the city.

It is a traditional New York saga of tenants who complain about intolerable conditions but refuse to leave and make a profit with clandestine sublets; of landlords who spend more energy on legal battles than than on maintenance; and of public policies that provide cheap rents to long-ensconced residents -- who tend to be middle class or affluent -- while leaving indigent newcomers to fend for themselves on the open market. 'Squatters on Public Land'

The result of all this is a dilapidated public facility that is sealed from the public by chain-link fence and razor-ribbon wire. Its docks are rotting and its waters have so much silt that they are unnavigable most of the day -- not that navigability is a major concern. Ninety percent of the boats in the marina never leave the dock, and consequently there is rarely any room for outside boaters to come in.

"The people in the boat basin are squatters on public land," said Peter Wright, chairman of the Riverside Park Fund, a private group that raises money for the park. "We should have a spiffy public recreational facility that generates revenue for the Parks Department. Instead we have an eyesore that's like a private co-op, and the city is subsidizing it. Why? These are not poor people. Why do they get to live in a park?"

New York's four other municipal marinas, which forbid boaters to take up residence there, generate revenue for the city. The city is guaranteed at least $150,000 annually, for instance, from the concessionaire at the 330-slip World's Fair Marina in Flushing, Queens. The concessionaire operates it and pays for maintenance as well as capital improvements, an arrangement common at municipal marinas in other cities.

The Parks Department, however, is currently unable to find any concessionarie to run the 79th Street Marina because of its decrepit condition and its residents' reputation for rent strikes.

The residents began living there year-round in the mid-1960's, according to Gene Greenspun, who has the most seniority among the roughly 150 "live-aboards" there today. He got a berth at the marina in 1955 and began living year-round in 1969.

"It's a romantic way of life," Mr. Greenspun, a chemist and engineer, said while sitting on his upstairs balcony recently watching the orange evening sky over the Palisades. "When I moved here it was strictly for love of the water. Today you have people here because it's cheap."

Mr. Greenspun's 2,000-square-foot home, named the Fountainhead, is a three-level, brown-shingled house with carpeting, a dishwasher, a den, a bar, a two-story living room, an organ and synthesizer, a washer and dryer, and cable television. His rent is $262.50 a month; two of his neighbors with taller, roomier houses pay a little less.

The average rent at the boat basin is $233 a month -- roughly what other residents of the Upper West Side pay in property taxes alone. The average monthly tax bills in the neighborhood are $170 a month for a rental apartment; $203 for a co-op; $420 for a condominium; $541 for a house.

Live-aboards get running water included in their rent, but they pay for their own electricity and provide their own oil or coal heating. They pay $60 monthly to park in a city garage next to the marina. At nearby commercial garages it costs between $300 and $415 monthly to park, and the city parking tax alone comes to more than $30 a month.

The city hopes to raise the dockage fees by 40 percent, which would still be a little less than the rate at some local private marinas. The increase will not provide any revenue for the city, because the new fees would just cover the budgeted operating and maintenance expenses, assuming the fees are paid. For now, with two-thirds of the live-aboards on a rent strike for the past year, the city is losing more than $200,000 a year running the marina. Charges of Negligence